Liquid and solid compounds applied to agricultural crops to improve crop yield include, for example, fertilizers, pesticides (e.g., herbicides, insecticides and fungicides), surfactants, conditioning agents, drift control agents and defoamers. Many of these compounds must be separately applied due to chemical incompatibility. For example, upon mixing some compounds separate into distinct layers. Other compounds react, creating a precipitate which falls out of solution. Also by way of example, some compounds react to form a gel, solidifying in the mixing tank or fluid dispensing lines and thereby preventing application to agricultural crops.
Nonetheless, it is often desirable to mix certain compounds prior to application to agricultural crops, as individual application of each compound is necessarily more time consuming and therefore more costly and less efficient. Accordingly, sometimes two or more compounds are mixed in a tank mounted to a tractor-drawn fluid dispensing system just prior to application of the mixture to fields containing growing crops or fields in which crops are to be grown. For example, a penetrating agent, a water conditioning agent, a drift control agent, or a defoaming agent may be individually tank mixed with a pesticide for common application to agricultural acreage. However, prior to the invention disclosed herein, a premixture containing a penetrating agent, a water conditioning agent, a drift control agent and a defoaming agent was not known by the inventors of the present invention to be commercially available.
Instead, field practice typically involves the mixing of constituents to be applied to agricultural acreage in a large tank just prior to application to the agricultural acreage. More particularly, preparation of a mixture comprising a pesticide, a penetrating agent, a water conditioning agent, a drift control agent and a defoaming agent may proceed in the following way: A 300 gallon tank is filed 1/2 to 2/3 full with water. Thereafter, nine pints of Choice.TM. water conditioning agent are added, followed by 9 ounces of Fighter F.TM. defoaming agent, followed by 3 quarts of LI 700.TM. surfactant. Three quarts of Roundup.TM. are then added. Nine ounces of Deposit.TM. drift control agent are then added, after which water is added, with mixing, to fill the 300 gallon tank. The resulting mixture is conventionally applied in the field at a rate of 10 gallons per acre. It can be readily seen that the non-water, non-pesticide ingredients constitute about 7.8 quarts of the 300 gallon mixture (i.e., 3 quarts LI 700.TM.+9 pints (=4.5 quarts) Choice.TM.+9 ounces (about 0.15 quart) Fighter F.TM.+9 ounces (about 0.15 quart) Deposit.TM..
In attempting to develop a premixture suitable for tank-mixing with certain pesticides, the following compounds were mixed: 1 quart of LI700 .TM. (a penetrating surfactant), 1 quart of Choice.TM. (a water conditioning agent), 3 ounces of Deposit.TM. (a drift control agent) and 3 ounces of Fighter F.TM. (a defoaming agent). The resulting product was initially dark brown. Upon standing, a gel-like precipitate formed, which subsequently hardened. The product was clearly unsuitable for its intended use.
Thereafter, a premixture containing a methylated soy bean oil (a penetrating surfactant), Deposit.TM. drift control agent, and silicon antifoam agent in weight percents of the total premixture of 92%, 7% and 1%, respectively, was created. After mixing, a cloudy liquid formed. After standing, the lower layer hardened to a concrete-like consistency, making it completely unsuitable for its intended use.
A further attempt at creating a stable premixture resulted in a layered, although re-dispersible product, when a methylated seed oil, an emulsifier and a polyacrylamide were mixed. No antifoaming agent was used in an attempt to avoid product clouding. While this product was an improvement over the previous attempts at creating a usable premixture, the absence of an antifoam agent and the layered end product also made this product commercially unsuitable for subsequent tank mixing with pesticides. However, because the product was initially re-dispersible, a larger test batch of the premixture was made. The scaled up process resulted in a product which was susceptible to formation of chunks, requiring time-consuming filtration.
A subsequent attempt at creating a stable premixture involved the mixing of Vortex.TM. (96% by weight), Polytex 363 (a polyacrylamide constituting 5% by weight) and SAG 47.TM. defoaming agent (1% by weight). Vortex.TM.'s primary constituents are methyl ester and AG Oil 7050. The product appeared to plug 25, 100 and 150 micron filter. Screening of the product produced numerous small chunks.
It can thus be seen that a need remains for an agricultural premixture suitable for tank mixing with a pesticide, which can condition the water to prevent precipitation of minerals in the water, serve as a drift reduction agent, and provide antifoaming and defoaming functionality, while maintaining pesticide compatibility. It is therefore against the background described above that the advances of the present invention have been made.